It's showtime / Steve Mariucci may be the coach in San Francisco, but part of his heart will always be in Green Bay

Gwen Knapp

Published
4:00 am PST, Saturday, January 12, 2002

Rocky Rockstroh, 68, a die hard Green Bay Packer fan plays the electric piano in his living room next to his yellow and green castget, at his home in Green Bay. "Who says you cann't take in with you", says Rockstroh who has been a packer fan for 61 years.
CHRONICLE PHOTOGRAPHER/ LACY ATKIN less

Rocky Rockstroh, 68, a die hard Green Bay Packer fan plays the electric piano in his living room next to his yellow and green castget, at his home in Green Bay. "Who says you cann't take in with you", says ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins

Photo: Lacy Atkins

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Rocky Rockstroh, 68, a die hard Green Bay Packer fan plays the electric piano in his living room next to his yellow and green castget, at his home in Green Bay. "Who says you cann't take in with you", says Rockstroh who has been a packer fan for 61 years.
CHRONICLE PHOTOGRAPHER/ LACY ATKIN less

Rocky Rockstroh, 68, a die hard Green Bay Packer fan plays the electric piano in his living room next to his yellow and green castget, at his home in Green Bay. "Who says you cann't take in with you", says ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins

It's showtime / Steve Mariucci may be the coach in San Francisco, but part of his heart will always be in Green Bay

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Steve Mariucci can't win this week. This is not a prediction about Sunday's NFL playoff game between the 49ers and the Green Bay Packers. This is simply the San Francisco coach's public-relations predicament as he prepares to return to a place he both loves and hopes to demoralize.

A TV camera caught him in the 49ers locker room last weekend, talking about the trip to Green Bay, referring to the place as "the big hairy armpit." He had to explain that he was trying to demystify football-crazed Green Bay and he didn't mean to insult the city.

He would never attack Green Bay or the Packers, his childhood idols. Mariucci is deeply connected to the place, emotionally and professionally. He has a picture of himself as a 10-year-old at Packers training camp, looking up at team stars Herb Adderley and Willie Wood. The black-and-white photograph hangs in his coaching office, and Mariucci loves to drag visitors over to the wall to see the picture and reminisce.

This, too, can get him into trouble, and he knows it. Some people might question his devotion to the 49ers, which is unimpeachable. They could see him as too fond of Green Bay -- his place of employment for four years and a mere 100 miles from his hometown in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

His safest options this week are to be quiet, an impossible task for a man as gregarious as Mariucci, or to make only bland statements about Green Bay, which would be even more difficult. The city known as Titletown is a place of extremes unlike any other in professional sports.

In other towns, people propose marriage on the scoreboards. In Green Bay, Mariucci has seen wedding parties in the stands, the bride in her white gown, the groom in his tux, sitting right alongside the people wearing foam rubber chunks of cheese on their heads.

Outsiders think of the cheesehead hats as the ultimate in Packers regalia. Locals know better. As the weather cools, Lambeau Field fills up with people in bulky suits of blaze orange camouflage, the uniform of duck hunters.

"The team's colors are green and gold, but in winter, it's orange," Mariucci said.

BIG DAYS IN TITLETOWN

Another sports franchise might have to fret over losing souvenir revenue to the camouflage manufacturers. Not this one. On the Friday before a big game, businesses all over the area routinely declare a Packers Day. Bank tellers, rental-car agents and fast-food cashiers wear team jackets, jerseys, sweatshirts.

"The mood of the whole city, or the town -- it's really a town -- is dictated by how the Packers are doing," Mariucci said. "You can tell by the traffic patterns whether the Packers won that week. If they win, the cars flow more smoothly. If they lose, everyone slows down, and there are more jams."

Because the Packers play in the smallest pro-sports community in America, with barely 100,000 residents in Green Bay, game days feel like giant family reunions. As in other pro towns, homeowners around Lambeau Field sell parking spaces in their backyards. Unlike other places, the parking fee often includes an order of bratwurst or any other delicacies grilling on the family barbecue.

A collegiate atmosphere takes over in the stadium, where most people sit on bleachers rather than elaborate, cup-holder-enhanced chairs. The cheerleaders, wearing demure sweaters, come from two local schools. Several years ago, the Packers followed the NFL trend and established a modern, glitzy dance team, but they got rid of it after a TV poll showed that fans considered the concept a flop in Green Bay.

For Mariucci, the family atmosphere in Green Bay meant having one of the league's budding superstars as his kids' babysitter. Brett Favre, Mariucci's protege when he was the quarterbacks coach for the Packers, was a world-class prankster well before he became a three-time MVP of the NFL. Tyler Mariucci, now a high school quarterback, did a TV interview this fall and described his favorite memory of Favre's adventures in babysitting. The quarterback came into the kids' bedroom, pulled up the covers, passed gas and then closed the covers over their heads to create a fragrant Dutch oven.

Mariucci sent a videotape of the interview to Favre, who guessed in advance which story Tyler had told. "He said, 'Was it the time they were in bed and I farted under the covers?" Mariucci said, after running the videotape for a reporter.

As a head coach, he may never have that kind of relationship with a player again. Even an assistant coach in a big city would have a hard time making such a connection. In Green Bay, it's easier because everyone lives close by.

One of Mariucci's neighbors, Mike Langenhorst, liked to fish and hunt, so Mariucci set him up for excursions with his three young quarterbacks -- Favre, Mark Brunell and Ty Detmer. The coach isn't much of an outdoorsman. Nor is he much of a tavern crawler. He'd be fairly out of step with Green Bay if it weren't for his football passion.

His family never had season tickets to Lambeau. They were too expensive and too hard to find. His friend Langenhorst applied for tickets for his daughter 12 years ago, and she has moved from about No. 16,400 on the waiting list to roughly No. 14,000. It's a safe bet that the list grew shorter because a lot of people died waiting.

"I went to two preseason games," Mariucci said. "It rained hard at one of them, and I remember watching from a tunnel."

The family saw more of the team on trips to training camp. Mariucci remembers how legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi made players change jersey numbers for practice to deceive scurrilous operatives from the Bears organization. "As if you wouldn't know who (quarterback) Bart Starr was just because he was wearing a different number," Mariucci said, chuckling.

PACKERS JACKET A SIGNAL

One of his sisters, Cheryl Hosking, remembers how Steve cherished a Packers jacket he won in a youth football contest. He still has it now, and he used it as a prop when he was hired away from Cal to be the Green Bay quarterbacks coach.

"That's how he told (his wife) Gayle that he got the job," Hosking said. He got the jacket out, put it on and said: "Guess where we're going."

The answer was obvious: the capital of football in America, Titletown.

Of course, if the team is losing, as it did for decades after Mariucci's childhood, Green Bay becomes a lot less cozy. The family atmosphere seems a lot more Bundy than Cosby.

Mariucci saw plenty of bitterness in town when he first started coaching there. Someone made up a sign that had the Packers logo distorted to look like a wheelchair.

He didn't mention the sign as a knock on Green Bay. It's just the way Packers fans feel and behave, with all the turbulence of the deepest love affairs. He was lucky enough to break through some of that tradition and make friends for life, friends who find themselves in a tough position this weekend.

Langenhorst, his old neighbor, plans to wear a 49ers jersey under a Packers jacket this Sunday. "It's going to be bittersweet for me," he said. "There's no winning either way. I'm a Packers fan, but I want Steve to win, too."

For Mariucci, though, there is no conflict. Being in Green Bay will make defeat more bitter and victory sweeter. "When you go home, you always want to be at your best," he said. "It makes you want to succeed even more than usual."